My first test on granite

[Andrea Weissenseel]

Yesterday I ran my first test on black granite :D

The photos are stockfotos, so I didn't had to worry about the quality.

I used Photoshop and applied one of the "picture effects" styles (Black/white Picture). Engraved it with 380 DPI, S 100% P 40% and used the "Stucki" parameter from the driver on all of them. Any comments are welcome :)

Are you using Diffusion also when engraving graphics on granite, or just for Photos ?

Andrea

[Margaret Turco]

Very nice! I have only made two granite pieces and used diffusion for both photos and graphics, but I don't have much experience. My printer driver does not have the same options that yours does so they wouldn't come out exactly the same. Others will chime in here in a couple of hours....

[Steve Clarkson]

Andrea,

More power to you for jumping right in with granite! Personally, I've aged about 10 years in just the last two months after working with granite.

In my limited experience, I've learned that the pre-engraving photo processing is more important than determining the correct speed/power settings.

I've also learned that you should run your tests with 2"x2" photos, that way you can get 24 or so on one 12"x12" tile......or use black matboard for testing.....or what I recently discovered was using clear acrylic painted black.......and I think others have used white ceramic tiles painted black.......it may save you some money when learning.

Good luck and don't get mad when I start hating you for turning out beautiful engravings.........

[Andrea Weissenseel]

Steve,

sorry for mentioning the "G" word :D

the photos I made where small ones and I had about 10 of them all over the tile, I just took a picture from the best outcome. Made some other tests with "Floyd" and the other guy, but I didnt like them - also I learned a lot just reading your threads about your experiences and the other comments to it, especially Frank's :) And I'm totally happy about avoiding Photograph

Andrea

[Frank Corker]

Andrea, for a first time the pictures have turned out well. You do have a bit of wash out on the lighter parts of your image. This is generally caused by too high a dpi setting for the image and/or too much power. For the ornaments, the power setting is perfect, that's because it has a nice even white going across, but it's not the case on the two photographs.

It's always a good thing to try engraving say the image of the child at different power settings. Reduce the power by sets of 5 and see what effect that has on the result. Also the last thing you must do before you save your file from any art program, is to make certain that your dpi has saved correctly. Certain programs, unfortunately Corel is one of them, result in the saved image being lower (72) and that's not good.

Hats off to you though, it's a very high end start that you have made.

[Dan Hintz]

Power grids, power grids, power grids, power grids, power grids... make one up, save it as a separate file, and use it for every new material you attempt to use. Your images will be 10 times better when the laser is turned to the substrate properly.

Also, picture sizes... I learned (after multiple image tests) that the less resolution in the substrate the larger your test images should be. Granite is a fairly low res substrate, so is glass... wood is a medium to high, marble is a fairly high one, and anodized aluminum is high to very high. For marble, I could get away with a 2" image, but knowing what i know now I would not make my granite test images smaller than 3x3, and probably use 4x4+ if I have scrap to play with. The more fleck in the granite, the larger your image needs to be. This is to prevent the odd fleck or two from destroying (or enhancing) apparent resolution/contrast in one spot and giving you a false sense of what your settings are doing.

YMMV...

[Martin Boekers]

Dan,

Good observations. I like the way you grade substrates for resolution. I will remember that when working with clients.

I've done that with glass, but never carried it further!;)

Maybe somewhere down the line we all ought to get our observations and tips/tricks together and publish a book on lazering.

Marty

[Bill Cunningham]

For very high res. substrates like marble, Anodized and coated aluminum, enamel coated brass, and even laser plastic, all you will need is your print driver for a decent halftone. Photograv etc; is not really needed.

[Scott M Smith]

For very high res. substrates like marble, Anodized and coated aluminum, enamel coated brass, and even laser plastic, all you will need is your print driver for a decent halftone. Photograv etc; is not really needed.


I am looking into getting a laser and all I see is "YOU MUST GET PHOTOGRAV!" Can you expand on why you say it is not needed?

[Dee Gallo]

I am looking into getting a laser and all I see is "YOU MUST GET PHOTOGRAV!" Can you expand on why you say it is not needed?

Scott, this is assuming you will be working with photos. If not, ignore this post!

I'm no expert, but if I were you I would spend my time and money on good photo prep before PhotoGrav. I use Photoshop, but any good paint program or photo editing program will do - it's your skill that makes the difference. Once you learn your software well, you can get the results you need...there are no real shortcuts there.

I have seen great results with and without PhotoGrav on this forum. It's more in the "look" you like and your skill with photo prep.

I recently made a granite tile test with both and had 40 people vote on them. It was literally 50-50. Half of them liked the higher contrast and drama of the Photgrav tile and half preferred the more even detail and "realism" of the driver only Jarvis screen.

I can't emphasize enough that there is no magic bullet here. Photograv will not save a crappy 72 dpi jpeg photo all by itself.

Again, I'm no expert, I'm sure others who know more will chime in here with their opinions. Collect them all, then make your own informed decisions.

cheers, dee

[Dan Hintz]

To put it simply, there's nothing PhotoGrav can do that you cannot do without it. You cannot achieve those results blindly, however, so some still choose to use PhotoGrav. I decided not to spend money on it, and as a result I spent my energy trying to figure out what created great results rather than trying to play with one more piece of software. So far, I believe I have succeeded, and my granite and marble tiles have proved quite nice.

YMMV...

[Scott M Smith]

Dee & Dan,

So, then in the most simplest of words, you can just use paint shop/photoshop with corel draw and get the same results? If so, I am glad, because I do not wish to have to learn a bunch more software when in reality corel can nearly do it by itself. What is a good way to tell the DPI of a photo. I do not have corel yet, but say for example, my 5MP camera should be over 1000 DPI right? Again, thank you for taking the time to enlighten me.

[Andrea Weissenseel]

Even though I have photograv, but I don't like too much (probably because I can't handle it :rolleyes:) but I know my Photoshop and Corel for a couple of years, so rather stick with them. When I do my photos on acrylic I use photoshop and the "Gold method" and they come out great. I dont import them into Corel but print them directly from photoshop - I don't think this makes a difference though. When saving my pictures, I save them with the same DPI that I set for engraving.

On the granite I didn't do that, but only used the difussion from the driver, because I think it looks better without that the sprankled touch - but that's a matter of taste I guess.

I will do some powergrids on a new tile, also I will found out what "fleck" and "washed out" means :D:o

Thank you for all the comments, Andrea

[Bill Cunningham]

I am looking into getting a laser and all I see is "YOU MUST GET PHOTOGRAV!" Can you expand on why you say it is not needed?

On 'those' particular substrates, drivers that will send a decent halftone to the laser is all thats really needed. Your driver generated halftone will not work with glass, or granite, because both of those materials are fairly low res. Some tight grain woods can also be etched with a halftone (the results vary).. And yup, there is nothing you can't do in photopaint etc.. that you can do with Photograv. I do have Photograv, and tuned several engrving parameters to 'my' laser (very few lasers will produce equal output at the same settings) .. What I use photograv for, is speed.. Once you have it figured out for 'your' laser, it will save a whole bunch of time in creating the engraving files.. But most important, as Dee said, if you have a crappy 72 dpi file, you will have a crappy engraving.. A few years ago, Rodney posted a series of steps in using photoshop (also works in photopaint) that puts you on the right track to turn a good phototgraph into a good engraving file, and it's been reposted several times since. Do a search, follow those steps, and with a little practice at tweaking the quality of the image, then run those steps, and you will get a decent engraving without the waaaay overpriced Photograv

[Keith Outten]

Andrea,

Visit these two links for information concerning Rodne Gold's method of engraving photographs.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=91076

http://www.dogcollarlabor.com/smc/
.